Friday, August 14, 2009

"Commander" Sampat Pal of the Gulabi Gang teaches women how to wield a bamboo baton. Photo by Sanjit Das

India's Pink Gang Are Vigilantes

By Anuj Chopra

BANDA DISTRICT, INDIA --On a hot afternoon, a throng of two dozen women clad in candy-pink saris gathered beneath the cool shade of a gnarled banyan tree. They listened with rapt attention as a sinewy but robust woman they called "commander" delivered a military-type briefing. "To face down men in this part of the world, you have to use force," she said. "We function in a man's world where men make all the rules. Our fight is against injustice."The "commander" is Sampat Pal, the 47-year-old leader of thousands of female vigilantes known as the Gulabi (Pink) Gang. Since its inception three years ago in a lawless area of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, women from some 600 villages have joined the group, wielding heavy clubs and and traditional bamboo batons, called lathis, used by police for crowd control to "convince" wife beaters, rapists and corrupt bureaucrats to change their ways. ...

Bangladesh's Bedes, known as river gypsies, live in tarpaulin tents after the monsoons. Photo by Sanjit DasBANGLADESH'S RIVER GYPSIES MOVING TO MAINSTREAM

By Anuj Chopra

LAUHAJANG, BANGLADESH --Each monsoon season, swelling rivers send the nomadic Bedes, or "river gypsies," drifting once again across Bangladesh waterways. When the monsoons end, the Bedes return to land to live in tarpaulin tents or bamboo huts in places like Lauhajang, a village of 150 families 44 miles from the capital, Dhaka. The village is part of a government program to end the 800,000-member community's nomadic ways, educate their children and convince them to become part of mainstream society. In December, the Bedes were given the right to vote for the first time in national elections. "For all these years, we were living as refugees in our own country," said Saud Khan, 51, a Lauhajang resident. "For the first time, we feel like we have become citizens of Bangladesh." ...

About Me

Anuj Chopra is a journalist currently based in Hong Kong. Since 2005 he has reported from various Asian hotspots, including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Myanmar. His reporting has appeared in publications such as TIME, Newsweek, Economist and Foreign Policy. He (which is to say, I, since I am actually writing this bio and just pretending not to) won the 2005 CNN Young Journalist Award and the 2012 Ramnath Goenka prize among other honors.
You can write to Anuj at kafkacrazy@gmail.com or contact him via twitter (@anujchopra)